


Put The Pieces Back Together My Way

by vain_glorious



Series: Matters Unresolved [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Conspiracy, Friendship, Gen, Illnesses, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 04:41:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vain_glorious/pseuds/vain_glorious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheppard tries to reunite his team and go home for real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put The Pieces Back Together My Way

The drive was long and boring. Sheppard tried to spend it asleep in the backseat, but every time he nodded off Teyla would thread her hand through his arms and find his neck, searching for a pulse. He finally tried to swat her away, and she just dug her nails into his skin.

“Ouch!” He sat up, rubbing the stinging lines on his throat. “Teyla, if I’m resisting, I’m clearly not dying!”

“This is a terrible idea,” McKay said, for about the thousandth time. He glanced in the rearview mirror and he looked so worried that Sheppard reluctantly sat up and leaned against the seat back so everyone could see just how conscious he was.

“I’m fine,” Sheppard said. “Believe me, if I suddenly become not fine, it won’t be subtle.”

“We know,” McKay snapped.

“You must not remember how frightening your condition was,” Teyla said, curled up in the front passenger seat so she could look at him.

Sheppard had no memory of either Teyla or Rodney being with him in the infirmary, but that probably just meant they’d been around when he’d been unconscious. He guessed that reminding them that he had every clue of how much that time had sucked wouldn’t make them any more enthusiastic about driving ever closer to the Stargate. He put his hands up in surrender, dropping the topic and the effort to sleep through the flat, dry lands rolling past the windows.

They ended up in a little town called Trinidad, Colorado. Teyla remembered Alicia Horace, a botanist on Atlantis, and asked if this was her home.

“No,” McKay said. “That Trinidad’s a tropical island with beaches and pretty ladies in bikinis. This Trinidad’s a shithole.”

This Trinidad had a Motel 6 and a Wallmart, though, and that was all they needed. Sheppard would have argued that they also needed at least two rooms at the motel, and that being a mere one hundred and eighty miles closer to the Stargate didn’t mean he needed to be watched constantly. But McKay had the credit card and he and Teyla completely ignored Sheppard and got one room with double beds. The scenario where McKay and Teyla acted together without even pretending to take him seriously was new, and Sheppard didn’t like it. It wasn’t jealousy, exactly, he just didn’t like it.

 ~

They arranged the rendezvous to happen in the Wallmart parking lot, a setting that didn’t make anyone feel particularly thrilled with their plan. Sheppard felt like he was preparing for something incredibly melodramatic. Even if they were under surveillance, it probably wasn’t any better than staying in the hotel room. If they weren’t, well, they were loitering like teenage drug dealers by the Wallmart loading dock for no real reason.

The meeting time came and passed. McKay’s face fell, but Teyla continued to stare out patiently at the road.

“Forget it,” McKay snapped. “This isn’t happening.”

“Give it fifteen minutes,” Sheppard said. He didn’t actually believe that would do anything but give them more time to stew, but it was polite and Teyla still looked hopeful.

“Would you come?” McKay asked, his mouth set in a sneer.

Sheppard glanced at him. “Obviously.”

“Not _you_ you!” McKay hopped off the bumper and threw an arm out towards the empty oncoming road. “Someone I knew two years ago came to me and asked me if wanted to commit treason against the US government, I sure as hell wouldn’t go anywhere near them.”

“We are simply old friends,” Teyla corrected. “Reuniting. We have not asked for anything illegal.”

McKay harrumphed and dropped his weight back on the edge of the car, bouncing it in place and Sheppard had to catch himself with a crutch before he lost his balance. “Some friend,” McKay muttered.

But a few minutes later, a beige station wagon pulled into the parking lot, crept past the rows of empty spaces and turned towards the loading dock. Sheppard could see the figure in the driver’s seat peering anxiously around. They were hard to miss, but he lifted a hand and waved, anyway. Teyla took a tentative step forward, relief filling her face.

“Thank God,” McKay said. Sheppard poked him in the side with the end of his crutch. “Ow! Hey!”

“Have faith,” Sheppard said, as the station wagon’s door popped open and the driver scrambled out.

Dr. Jennifer Keller hugged him so hard he forcibly redirected her hands because he genuinely thought she was busting his stitches.

“It is so good to see you, Colonel,” Keller said. Unfortunately, she immediately noticed that he was moving her hands and responded by pulling the hem of his shirt up, peering down to assess the injury. “Oh, my god. I’m sorry.” But then she was pressing against his wound with the tips of her finger, and that hurt like hell.

Finally, she released him and went to greet McKay and Teyla. Sheppard leaned back against the car and touched his stitches gingerly.

“Which one of you brought him here?” he heard Keller ask, even with her arms around McKay’s neck. She sounded kind of mad.

“Teyla,” McKay said, even though Sheppard distinctly remembered McKay agreeing to the plan, first.

“I did not think we could convince him to remain in Texas,” Teyla said, when Keller looked accusingly at her.

“I said he wouldn’t have a choice if we took his crutches and tied him to something in the house,” McKay retorted, apparently quoting a conversation he and Teyla had had in private.

“What?” Demanded Sheppard.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?” Keller asked, letting go of McKay. “I was afraid I was going to get here and you’d be comatose and having a seizure.”

“I feel fine,” Sheppard said, placidly. “I got a little headache when we went farther than this town, but that might have had something to do with spending three hours in the car with these two.”

McKay snorted and Teyla shot Sheppard a hurt look. He ignored it, since she’d been driving when the headache and nausea had started, and that was why he couldn’t tell if it was the Pegasus voodoo or simply normal bodily fear in response to the expectation of shortly dying in a fiery car crash.

“Sounds scientific,” Keller said, unknowingly echoing half of McKay’s sarcastic opinion from earlier. She crossed her arms. “I’m going to want to examine you fully.”

“That’s not why we called,” Sheppard said, settling his arms so that she couldn’t poke at his stitches again.

“No,” Keller said, “But that was part of why I agreed to come.”

No one had told Sheppard that. He looked from McKay to Teyla and back again.

“That is correct,” Teyla said, and she didn’t look the slightest bit guilty.

“We thought you might be dead at this point,” McKay said, defensively.

Sheppard glared, wondering what else they’d talked about that they hadn’t bothered to share.

What followed had to be the least fun Sheppard had ever had while half-dressed in the backseat of a car with a girl. They could have just gone back to the hotel room, but this way he didn’t really have to cooperate fully since the cramped seating provided a lot of unintentional resistance all on its own. Also, McKay and Teyla had to find some place else to be, even if initially McKay had made to stand right beside the passenger door.

“There is going to be blood,” Sheppard heard Teyla inform McKay. He made a face and a few minutes later she was hauling him towards the customer entrance of Wallmart.

Sheppard really hoped there wasn’t going to be any of _his_ blood, but it also looked like Keller had ransacked a hospital for everything that would fit through the door and filled the rear of her station wagon with it. He tried to point out that he’d pretty much literally just come out of yet another hospital, as the stitches and cast should clearly illustrate. Keller didn’t budge, and she launched into a reasonable imitation of a standard physical.

He tried to answer her questions; most of it was stuff he hadn’t thought about in years and seemed totally irrelevant given that he was fine now and trying to fix the disaster that had happened in between.

The dark tinting of Keller’s windows shielded them slightly from the eyes of the viewing public. Providing they weren’t arrested for public indecency by some keen eyed Trinidad cop, Sheppard was slightly grateful for the privacy. He had questions for Keller, too, and he thought she’d answer them more honestly and more usefully than McKay’s anger and self-recrimination or Teyla’s maddeningly assured optimism.

“You want me to cut your subdermal transmitter out?” Keller asked, after capping off a second tube of his blood and caching it in a mini-cooler.

Startled, Sheppard touched his arm. Keller moved his fingers lower. “It’s right there.” She said. “I took out Teyla’s and Rodney’s,” she said. “A long time ago.”

“Did Rodney cry?” Sheppard asked. She rolled her eyes. Yeah,” he said, proffering his arm. “Yeah.”

It began to feel more right, now. More like a covert operation against his own government, one that was just as well organized and plotted out as hack and slash surgery in the parking lot of a Wallmart. Keller was, of course, very careful and utterly sanitary about it, but the meaning stayed.

“It’s not deep,” she said, stabbing him in the arm with something that immediately burned. For a second he was lightheaded enough to sway, and in that moment it occurred to him Keller could have been sent here to thwart their effort before it began, and that she could have done it just like that. He moved away from her, getting only as far as the other side of the car, of course, and she slid down the seat to follow.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

A strange, asymmetric numbness was spreading, replacing the burning sensation. It was local anesthetic. Sheppard relaxed as she took his arm back and began to sterilize his skin.

“Ronon,” he said.

Keller sighed. “I couldn’t…I mean, obviously I couldn’t. I did tell him, though, that it wasn’t like the other one. He knew he could cut it out himself.”

Sheppard stared at her face, watching the way she concentrated on the task at hand. He could feel pressure against his arm, a vague tickle that meant he was probably already bleeding.

“You saw him a lot?” he asked, aware that now was not a good time to distract her.

“At first,” she said, not looking up. “Rodney tried to pull the same thing he and Teyla did.” She frowned. “It didn’t work.”

“I know.”

“Lying isn’t Ronon’s thing,” she said, and now she flicked her eyes up briefly, as checking to see if in fact he did remember that.

Sheppard’s chest heaved. “I know,” he said.

“Got it.” He felt more pressure, almost a tugging, and then something metallic clinked softly against the basin sitting between them. Keller held gauze against his arm, and when he looked down he could see the edges turning crimson.

After Keller washed it off, he held the tiny microchip on the tip of one finger. It looked fragile and insignificant.

“I keep mine in my bra,” Keller said.

He looked up, confused. “ _What?_ ”

“Destroying it is a little obvious,” she said. “I figure it’ll draw more attention than its worth. But I like to know I can trash it if I need to, after all this.”

“Attention,” he agreed. “Maybe I shouldn’t let whoever monitors this know it’s out yet.”

“Yeah,” she said, and switched back to the medical questions. “How long have you had that cast on?”

“Couple weeks,” he said. “It’s a bitch.”

“I can get you a walking cast,” she said. His crutches were shoved in the rear.

“Okay,” he said, watching as she gathered up the equipment and began to put it away. “I need you to tell me about Ronon.”

Keller didn’t stop packing, balling up the bloody gauze and shoving it into a grocery bag. “I came here for that, too.”

“Rodney’s told me a little, but he wasn’t there for when Ronon escaped.”

“I didn’t help.” Keller said. She stripped off her latex gloves, dropping each into the trash. “I told him where the subdermal tracker was, that’s all I did.”

Sheppard didn’t say anything. He figured she’d been in the brig by now if she had helped, and she probably knew that.

“Did someone help?” he asked.

“I think so.” She shrugged. “They all thought it was you guys.” She paused. “Um, I mean Rodney and Teyla.”

“It wasn’t.”

“I guess he couldn’t wait,” Keller said. She peered at him. “You’re looking a little pale. You should eat something.”

She had a juice box with cartoon characters in one of the compartments near the driver’s seat. He was glad she realized she’d just sucked his blood, and it wasn’t necessarily more Pegasus voodoo at work.

“A lot of people would have helped,” she said. “But it was pretty crazy. Most of the international crew weren’t around anymore. Except Rodney. You can imagine how calm and reasonable he was.”

“I think about as calm and reasonable as I would have been,” Sheppard replied.

“They did a pretty good job keeping it secret,” Keller continued. “I think a lot of people thought he left with Teyla. They put him in solitary confinement because he was dangerous and the only reason I heard anything after that was the medical staff talks.”

“How’d he get out?” Sheppard asked.

“I don’t know. He took one of the archaeologists hostage, though, used their access card to get through most of the security.”

Sheppard imagined Ronon had probably also used a lot more to get through the SFs.

“He kill anyone?”

“No.” But her voice had a tinge of _not for lack of trying_.

“Well,” Sheppard said, “At least there’s that.”

“I don’t really know what else to say,” Keller said. “I don’t know where he is.”

“He hasn’t tried to contact Rodney or Teyla,” Sheppard said.

“Or me,” Keller added. “I’m not really surprised, to be honest. I wouldn’t want to talk to us, either.”

Even if he wanted to hear her opinion, Sheppard didn’t have to like it.

“This isn’t his planet,” he said. “This isn’t even his galaxy. He doesn’t understand how this place works."

Keller shrugged. “I think Ronon of all people can figure it out. Honestly, Colonel, I’d rather we don’t know where he is than he be locked up in a cage again by certain crazy xenophobes in the IOA and NID.”

“I’m not trying to bring him in,” Sheppard said.

Keller went quiet. “I can drop a few hints around the mountain that you’re looking,” she said. “Okay?”

Sheppard wasn’t sure that was a fantastic idea. It might unearth whoever had helped Ronon get out, but it would also certainly alert anyone interested in bringing him back.

“Okay,” he said.

“I don’t want you going anywhere near the SGC,” Keller continued. “I mean it. You dying isn’t going to help find Ronon.”

“Ronon’s not in the SGC,” he said, reasonably.

Keller was looking out the window, towards the Wallmart. “You should probably keep Teyla as far away as possible, too.”

Sheppard followed her eyes; McKay and Teyla were walking from the exit. McKay was holding a paper sack.

“Why?” he asked, darkly. “She hasn’t said anything.”

“I’ve heard about growing interest in her Wraith abilities,” Keller said. She coughed pointedly. “Something they didn’t know about before Rodney got her out.”

“Got it,” he said, and tried not to be utterly horrified.

Sheppard put his shirt back on and managed to be more or less back together with the door open and his crutches in hand by the time McKay and Teyla returned.

“You look pale,” Teyla said. She reached inside Rodney’s paper bag and produced a package of raisins. “You should eat.”

She was looking very concerned, so he took it. “Thanks, Teyla.” He tipped his head at Keller. “She’s a vampire.”

“I bought donuts,” piped up McKay, and dropped the bag in Sheppard’s lap.

“Get your blood sugar back up,” Keller agreed.

They were the chocolate-coated mini kind, and Sheppard immediately abandoned Teyla’s raisins. He would have said thank you to McKay, except that Keller casually lifted his crutches up and walked away, stopping just out of earshot where McKay and Teyla joined her. If the effort to distract him had been any more skillful than chocolate donuts and they’d done anything more sinister than stand directly in front of him while quite clearly talking about him, Sheppard might have been pissed.

Instead, he stuffed a donut in his mouth and rapped his knuckles against the side of Keller’s car in annoyance. “Guys!”

The conversation was short. Keller brought his crutches back, at the same time that Teyla made a beeline for the back of the car and opened the trunk. She and McKay began transferring the boxes of medical crap into McKay’s car.

“That for me?” Sheppard asked, pointlessly.

Keller pulled a pen and pad of paper from her purse.  She’d scribbled a bunch of names and phone numbers on the first page, and she ripped it out and handed it over. It was pretty much every medical professional in Northwest Texas or Southeast Colorado, and instructions on what to tell them to get proper treatment if there was an emergency. She had another brief monologue about staying the hell away from the Stargate, but he appreciated that at no point did she threaten him with any kind of involuntarily hospitalization. The way things at the SGC were going, he’d have believed her and then he’d have to fashion his crutches into some kind of weapon.

“Go back to Colonel Mitchell’s house,” Keller said, sounding mostly hopeless.

“Whose house?”

“Colonel Mitchell’s cousin rents Rodney the house in Texas,” Teyla said, coming up with her arms full of plastic tubing. Sheppard glared at it, because tubing meant catheters and IVs and other horrible things. Also, Teyla and McKay weren’t allowed to try to do medical things to him, ever.

“Oh,” he said. “Who’s Colonel Mitchell?”

“He leads SG-1,” Keller said. “He’s a good guy.”

Repeating her suggestion to return to Texas, Keller took their contact info and promised to keep in touch before she climbed back into the station wagon and chugged off.

~

They spent another two weeks in Trinidad, and it was absolutely miserable. Among the equipment Keller had delivered was a heart monitor, complete with pulse ox and a thousand other bells and whistles that would all loudly go off if Sheppard started dying or accidentally knocked it loose in his sleep, because McKay bullied him into wearing it at night. All the same, after the fifth time it fell off, the alarms exploded, and Teyla didn’t spring out of bed and launch herself at his like she had the four previous times, McKay bellowed “Would you keep still!?” and hurled his pillow across the room at Sheppard.

Teyla sat up, squinting in the darkness while Sheppard tried to reconnect everything. He was pretty sure he’d lost a couple decades of his life from the near heart attack he’d had each time the alarms sounded directly next to his sleeping head, and if Teyla hadn’t been watching he’d have turned the whole system off and been done with it. He thought that was why she watched him.

Unfortunately, while she supervised him, McKay realized he’d have to get out of bed to retrieve his pillow so he reached over and swiped hers, shoved it under his head and rolled away from her with his arms wrapped tightly around it.

Sheppard couldn’t see in what followed in the dark, but it involved Teyla asking for her pillow back, McKay grumbling, and then an undignified squeal that resulted in him returning it immediately and stumbling out of bed looking for the one he’d hurled away. If moving wasn’t likely to make the monitors come loose again, Sheppard would have found a way to keep it hostage for the rest of the night.

As much as he’d missed his team – and he had, even if he hadn’t really told them that – being confined in a tiny hotel room together did nothing to make up for the two years he’d lost. In the interest of peace and tranquility and no one beating anyone else to death with Sheppard’s crutches, McKay found the one WiFi hotspot in town, took his laptop, and vanished to do some work.

Sheppard and Teyla were left to entertain themselves. Teyla had little interest in watching television, which reduced their options drastically. He tried to argue that he’d been deprived of it for his entire time on Atlantis and also Afghanistan, and thus he had a lot of catching up to do. Teyla shrugged and made a comment that it was all she’d had to do at the SGC and didn’t need to see anymore. Sheppard immediately turned the television off.

Those two weeks were all it took for Sheppard to notice something that sucked: he didn’t feel fantastic. It was tempting to blame the general feeling of fatigue on sharing a room with McKay and Teyla, who for not really being married had developed the irritatingly intimate habit of whispering to each other before they slept. But he couldn’t blame them for the mild nausea that began to surface after every meal and the fact that he sometimes vanished into the bathroom like an anorexic girl afterwards. He got headaches that came and went, annoying but not crippling. The general aches and pains from the Apache crash intensified, as well. It sucked. It was barely comparable to the nightmare he remembered in the Atlantis infirmary in terms of pain, but at the same time it was completely comparable in every other way and that was scary as hell.

Sheppard did not say a word about it to Teyla or McKay. He was vaguely curious if the monitors he wore at night would reflect any kind of decline. Keller was going to collect the readings at the end of the week, and he had every intention of lying to her as well.

Teyla didn’t like television, but she did like walking aimlessly around Wallmart. Sheppard didn’t even try to keep up with her, he just hopped into one of those motorized carts for the disabled or morbidly obese and laid his crutches across his lap. McKay was absolutely mortified, accused Sheppard of re-enacting the Daytona 500 in the aisles – initially, he had a point – and refused to be seen in the same section of the store with him.

The stupid cart didn’t have that much zoom, though, so after a while Sheppard just kept pace with Teyla. He wished he’d been around when she first saw a Wallmart, back when McKay said she tried to barter. Now, as much as she liked to pick merchandise up and touch it, she hardly every wanted to buy anything and McKay said straight capitalism bored her.

A few days before Keller was scheduled to visit again, Teyla asked him if he thought there would be any news of Ronon.

“Not unless he wants there to be,” Sheppard said, truthfully.

“I agree,” Teyla said, and went back to sniffing the body spray from a purple-colored bath set. She didn’t like to wear the lotions – she said it felt artificial and stifling on her skin, but she thought the arrangements were attractive and the scents were interesting. “I hope that Jennifer was correct,” she said, moving along to a pinker set of bottles. “That he had help escaping and is among friends.”

“He’s not among us,” Sheppard said.

“No,” she said. “I still find it strange that he chose to run to the surface.”

“What?”

“The surface,” she said. “When I planned my escape, I intended to go through the Stargate.”

Sheppard blinked at her. “Your escape?” He didn’t bother cautioning her to be more discreet. Mostly he no longer cared, but the aisle was empty and this was Wallmart.

“I had many plans,” Teyla said. “Rodney discouraged them all and then he was able to secure my release. But none of my plans were to remain here.” She wrinkled her nose, losing interest in the bath sets. “I assume Ronon has the same goal as I do: to return home.”

Sheppard didn’t say anything, but he noted her use of the present tense and then found he really couldn’t say anything.

                                                                        ~

Later, when he and McKay went to pick up dinner from Trinidad’s one and only Chinese restaurant, Sheppard had a chance to talk to him alone. He told him what Keller had said about Teyla, half expecting to have to take over steering during the reaction. Instead, McKay just glowered and gripped the wheel harder.

“Maybe we should ask her why she’s still working there, huh?” he muttered.

“We need to keep Teyla away from the SGC,” Sheppard said. “We can’t let her –”

McKay rolled his eyes and interrupted. “Believe it or not, the only thing Teyla has _let_ me do through out this whole thing is marry her.”

Sheppard sat back, confused. “What?”

“I’m not an idiot! I didn’t just take the US government’s word that they’d leave her alone just because she’s Mrs. Rodney McKay now.”

“Mrs. Meredith Rodney McKay,” Sheppard interrupted, since McKay wasn’t getting to the point.

“Oh shut up!”

“What didn’t she want you to do?”

“I tried to get her out of the country,” McKay said. “I tried to send her to my sister in Canada.”

“Oh.” Sheppard paused.

“I mean it’s not like they couldn’t still – if they wanted to be internationally criminal – which they probably don’t have any qualms about, actually – but, I thought, it’d be harder and more laws and –”

“That was smart,” Sheppard interrupted. “She should have gone.”

“I know!” McKay twisted his face up. “She wanted to find Ronon, and she wouldn’t leave the country, and I sure as hell couldn’t make her do anything!” McKay dropped his voice. “She got a bunch of amnesty offers from the EU before, and she wouldn’t take them because someone showed her a map of where the Czech Republic is.”

“Zelenka?” Sheppard asked. “You were gonna let her marry Zelenka?”

“He came up with the marriage thing,” McKay admitted, quietly. “And hell no.”

“The things they might have in mind for her…” Sheppard began.

“Don’t think I haven’t imagined it!  I had months, John. At this point I wouldn’t even put vivisection past them.” McKay went as if to cross his arms in anger, then remembered he was driving and savagely grabbed the wheel. “I _hate_ this.”

Sheppard let the car go silent until they were on their way back from the restaurant, their order steaming in Styrofoam boxes in the backseat.

“You ever talk to the IOA?” he asked, mildly.

McKay laughed bitterly. “They call about once a month,” he said, “trying to get me to come work for them again. I like to remind them they’re heinously unethical not to mention hilariously incompetent and there had better be a Wraith cruiser over my head before I ever do anything for them again, so they should fuck off.”

“Hmm,” Sheppard said.

McKay looked at him. “What?”

“Maybe next time they call, you should say something else.”

“What? Why? You can’t possibly-”

“Because,” Sheppard interrupted, wrapping one arm around his midsection and wishing the scent of dinner wasn’t already making him nauseated. “Teyla wants to go home.”

~ 

That was how Sheppard and Teyla ended up driving back to Texas without McKay. It involved lying – or omission of key facts – to Teyla, mostly to keep the goddamn peace because McKay was already yelling and while she probably would speak quietly and act like she was being totally reasonable, the end result would have been lots more fighting and a few more weeks in Trinidad.

Sheppard tried to lie to Keller, too, but that worked less well.

The machine monitoring him at night had some kind of memory disc that Keller plugged into her laptop, producing an incomprehensible screen which apparently told her things like ‘poor oxygenation’ and ‘increased heart rate’.

“I feel fine,” Sheppard said, and shrugged.

They were in the hotel room this time, and McKay and Teyla were giving him all the privacy of sitting on their bed rather than his. He wouldn’t have minded, since he was fully clothed and intending to stay that way, but then they started participating in the examination.

“Liar,” McKay said, immediately.

“He is getting headaches,” Teyla said. “Frequently.”

Before Keller could even ask him to confirm it, McKay went on. “And he’s puking a lot.”

Sheppard glared at them, betrayed, and Keller looked accusingly at him while she scribbled in her notepad.

“Thanks,” he said, sarcastically, while Keller said it completely genuinely.

“Colonel,” she said, and waited.

“Headaches, nausea, vomiting, general fatigue, and two really nosy roommates,” he ticked off.

He was surprised she didn’t yell at all.

“You know the only course of treatment, Colonel,” she said, flatly.

“Yeah,” he said.

“We will return to Texas as soon as possible,” said Teyla, and it was nice that she thought they’d be leaving for his good rather than her own.

He shot her an annoyed look, anyway. “Ronon?” he asked Keller.

“I spread it around that you’re back,” Keller said. “No one bit. I think you might get a fruit basket or something from your old soldiers, though.”

“Fantastic,” McKay muttered. “You’ve been a huge help.”

Keller scowled. “Actually, your name came up a lot more, McKay. Something went boom on one of the Daedalus-class ship – burned a lot of people – and they’re having trouble fixing it so that it won’t happen again. I got asked if now that Sheppard’s back, you’re rejoining the program.”

“What?” McKay looked offended. “I didn’t quit because of him, I quit because of what they did to Ronon and Teyla, among every other evil and stupid thing…”

Keller waved him off. “Maybe someone will contact you, Colonel.”

In a quiet curious voice, McKay asked, “What went boom?”

Things went boom all the time. The only reason anyone was asking about McKay this time was because they’d called Keller and had her do more name-dropping.

Sheppard wasn’t too worried about McKay. He didn’t really have to do any acting. No one expected him to be calm or play nice in general, let alone after the terms on which he’d left. McKay genuinely missed getting to play with classified technology and the IOA would believe that was why he’d come back. Providing he could keep his mouth shut enough to gain both trust and access to any kind of ship that could handle an intergalactic journey, they’d eventually have Teyla’s ticket home.

And maybe they’d eventually have Ronon to send with her.

It weighed heavily on Sheppard’s mind as he and Teyla drove back to Texas. Or at least it did once he convinced Teyla that since they were moving away from the Stargate he was already feeling much better, that he could too operate the pedals with his left leg, and that if she continued driving they were either going to arrested by the Texas Highway Patrol or lynched to death by very angry truckers.

It bothered him to be going the opposite direction, while McKay headed north with Keller. If he didn’t imagine another SWAT team coming for Teyla, it would have been more tempting to drive her back to Rodney’s house, and then take off. Except he’d already gotten sick 3 hours from the SGC, any closer and he might not even be awake.

He must have been radiating angry vibes, because Teyla poked him in the shoulder.

“I do not like this, either,” she said. “But you would not be safe.”

“Neither would you,” he said, kind of ruining the plan to be subtle about it.

Teyla gave a mild shrug. “I am not afraid.” She shifted in her seat, resting her chin in her hand.

“This sucks,” Sheppard said, and drove faster.

 

~

A couple of people did contact Sheppard after Keller let it be known he was looking for the SGC’s missing prisoner. Unfortunately, none of them were Ronon and none of them knew where Ronon was. One phone call was from the National Intelligence Department, politely inviting him to meet with them at Cheyenne Mountain to discuss the ‘alien fugitive’. Sheppard thought he deserved a medal for his restraint and self-control and for not using the word ‘fuck’ when he informed the caller that going near it was a suicide mission and if they wanted to talk to him they’d have to do the driving.

He didn’t actually expect them to take him up on it. Then, he immediately regretted inviting the people who wanted to keep Teyla in a cage into her home. She took it in stride, of course. The morning of their scheduled visit, when he tried to give her his sidearm – _just in case_ – she raised the corner of her shirt and revealed a zat gun tucked into the waistband of her skirt.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked.

“It was a souvenir from my time in the SGC,” she said, and smiled.

He told her she didn’t have to stick around for the interview, that she could find something to do outside of the house. She declined, though to be honest Sheppard wasn’t really asking on her behalf. It was vaguely concerning that one of the NID agents might say something about her or to her or look at her in an offensive way, and then Sheppard would accidentally shoot him in the head.

The NID agent that showed up fit the man in black profile to a T, tall but otherwise bureaucratically non-descript. He introduced himself as Malcolm Barrett, and then stepped aside to reveal a companion. Sheppard had considered switching to the walking cast provided by Keller, mostly because he thought the crutches made him look vulnerable. But the walking cast hurt like hell, so the crutches stayed. He was glad, at this moment, because when he shifted his weight forward and hung there his shock wasn’t noticeable. Standing behind Barrett on the door step was Sheppard’s former second in command, Major Evan Lorne.

Lorne wasn’t in uniform. He was wearing a dark suit like Barrett, but the moment he made eye contact with Sheppard his shoulders jerked like he wanted to stand at attention. He caught himself, though, and just kind of held himself a little straighter.

“Major Lorne,” Sheppard said, hearing how unfriendly his own voice sounded and not particularly caring.

“Lieutenant Colonel now,” Lorne said, “actually. Good to see you again, Colonel.”

“Come on in,” Sheppard said, deliberately not returning the sentiment. He crutched backwards, letting them enter and close the front door.

He joined Teyla on the sofa in the living room. It wasn’t a space that got much use, so they’d dragged the stools from the kitchen in there for extra seating. Sheppard propped his cast up on the coffee table and enjoyed watching Barrett and Lorne try and fail to settle themselves on the stools without looking awkward.

“Good to see you again, Teyla,” Lorne tried again.

Teyla dipped her head in his direction. “I am called Mrs. McKay, now,” she said, casually, looking at him from slitted eyes. Sheppard gave her an appreciative smile.

He expected maybe a little more verbal sparring, but Lorne just nodded and said, “I know.”

It was a little disappointing, because Sheppard had memorized the timeline of McKay and Teyla’s fictional relationship up to their fake marriage, and was fully prepared to lie about it as obnoxiously as possible for as long as necessary.

“We’re here to talk about Ronon Dex,” Barrett said.

Sheppard nodded. “You work for the NID now, Lorne?” He kept his tone mild.

“No,” Lorne said. “I’m the Stargate liason to the NID on this case.” He cleared his throat. “I’m familiar with subject and both agencies have a stake in it.”

“The subject being Ronon?”

“Yeah.” Lorne was beginning to look uncomfortable, which was nice because Sheppard had no intention of letting up.

“Has your familiarity aided the search?” Teyla chimed in, sweetly vicious.

“Not as yet,” Barrett answered for him. He looked vaguely bored by the pissing match. “Which is why we’re here. Colonel Sheppard, are you willing to assist our investigation?”

Sheppard shrugged. “I’ve been out of the loop. Why don’t you explain the situation to me and I’ll see how I feel?”

Barrett wasn’t an idiot, but Sheppard had asked nicely so he launched into a monologue about the danger Ronon Dex posed to the national security of the United States and the possibility that as his one-time commanding officer, Sheppard knew how he thought and behaved and would be able to locate him. Perhaps he might even be able to use old loyalties to convince the fugitive to surrender peacefully.

Sheppard appreciated the deftness of the pitch, since at no point did Barrett say anything about how much fun he would have chasing and incarcerating an old friend who hadn’t actually done anything except refuse to be kept in a cage. The bit about surrendering was absurd, though, and it sounded kind of like a threat.

He didn’t actually pay that much attention after he got the gist. Instead, he watched Lorne.

Lorne was having trouble sitting still. He was alternately stiffly staring at Barrett and then slumping down and casting sidelong glances at Teyla and what little of the house he could see from his seat. The second Sheppard caught his wandering eye, Lorne’s gaze snapped back to Barrett and he sat up straight again.

“We could really use your help, sir,” Lorne capped Barrett’s speech, but it sounded more automatic than anything else.

Sheppard leaned back against the sofa. “You know,” he said. “I’d like to give you guys a hand but I’m not really in the greatest shape at the moment.” He waved a hand as the cast and then pointed at his abdomen. “Only reason I’m here."

Barrett looked like he waiting for more.

“I’m supposed to hang out here,” Sheppard continued. “Doctor’s orders. But I could take a look at what you’ve done so far. Maybe something will stand out.”

Sadly, Barrett really wasn’t a moron, and even if he was Sheppard knew Lorne wasn’t. He was pretty sure the only reason they’d come was because even if they didn’t think he’d readily agree to join the party, they knew he’d be a hell of a lot more pleasant about saying no than he imagined McKay had been. His half-hearted effort to get a look-see at whatever records the NID and IOA had on Ronon’s last known movements wasn’t particularly subtle and Barrett immediately shook his head.

The meeting was over then. Barrett made small talk, acting as if Sheppard’s health excuse was completely valid and the sole reason he’d said no. Lorne continued to look ill at ease. He asked if he could use their bathroom, which sounded to Sheppard like a request to go plant surveillance equipment in the house, but he said yes anyway. Teyla immediately rose to follow him, although presumably she let him use the john alone.

Barrett and Lorne left immediately after that. Sheppard didn’t even bother to get off the couch and it was Teyla who locked the door behind them.

“You know about Lorne?” he asked when she walked back to him. He was going to need a roster of who was playing on the other team now.

“I did not,” she said, looking at the vacated stools. 

“Rodney?”

“May have,” she admitted. “He does not always remember to share relevant details.”

Lorne joining the dark side seemed pretty damn relevant, but Sheppard let it go. Given the choice, he’d have put Teyla in charge of accounting for that kind of thing, while Rodney should be building an automated Find-a-Ronon device.

“Want to go see what he hid in the bathroom?” he asked.

~

The second phone call came while Sheppard was shaking out the shower curtain and Teyla was peering into the top of the toilet tank.

“Go for it,” Sheppard said to Teyla, because last time it’d been McKay and there’d been a five minute diatribe forbidding Sheppard from answering the phone for vague reasons he hadn’t entirely understood but seemed to be based on a belief that it was tapped and Sheppard might say something stupid and reveal everything. Also, it would end with McKay saying “Let me talk to my wife,” and even if Sheppard was actively participating in that ruse now, it still totally weirded him out.

Teyla vanished from the room, and Sheppard pushed the toilet seat lid down and sat on it. Not particularly hopeful, he lifted the bathmat off the floor and found himself looking down at a thin manilla envelope lying against the tiles.

Teyla returned, cordless phone in hand. “It is for you.” She looked down at the floor. “What is that?”

They traded. Sheppard took the phone and Teyla took the envelope.

“Hello?” Sheppard said, while Teyla sat down opposite him on the tub edge, opened the flap, and spilled the contents out into her lap. A stack of papers slid down, followed by something tiny and black that bounced off her knee and hit the floor with a metallic clink.

“Bug,” Sheppard said, immediately, and went to smash it with the end of a crutch.

Teyla picked it up off the floor, the casing coming apart in her hands. She held it in her palm, and Sheppard checked to make sure the circuitry was indeed crushed. “Well, that wasn’t very covert,” he said.

“Hello? Hello! Can you hear me?” Came a very putout sounding voice near Sheppard’s head, and he abruptly remembered he was supposed to be talking on the phone.

“Sheppard,” he said, refocusing his attention. Teyla was crushing the remains of the bug between her fingernails.

“Yeah,” the voice said. “As I said nineteen times, this is General Jack O’Neill. I guess you were distracted by the…bug?”

“Cockroach,” Sheppard covered. He found himself sitting up straight, even though the general couldn’t see him, and hell, he was sitting on a toilet lid.

“Ah.” O’Neill sounded tolerantly confused.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

O’Neill cleared his throat. “I thought I should thank you for convincing Dr. McKay to rejoin the program.” He didn’t sound particularly grateful. “Gives HR more to do, you know. And personally I like getting the memos. It’s good reading.”

“Um,” Sheppard said. “You’re welcome.”

“Sooo,” O’Neill continued. “You’re back.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. Teyla was rifling through the envelope contents, eyes large. He poked her in the leg. She turned the paper in her hands around, showing him a full-size photo taken of the back of someone very large dragging someone smaller down an SGC hallway. 

“Had some Taliban trouble in Afghanistan,” he said, mindlessly. He didn’t recognize Ronon without hair. It didn’t even look like him. And apparently, Lorne hadn’t fully switched sides.

“Sons of bitches,” O’Neill said heartily.

“Yes, sir,” he said again, reaching his hand out to take the picture from Teyla.

“Injured?” O’Neill asked.

If Sheppard had been at all focused on the conversation, he might have realized how weird it was – weirder than General O’Neill usually was, and that was saying something.

“Minor,” he said. “Little banged up. Stateside for now.”

“Ah,” O’Neill said. “Yeah, I heard you were staying with Dr. McKay.”

“With his wife,” Sheppard said, trying to pay more attention. It felt like O’Neill was trying to steer the exchange somewhere. “McKay’s been at the SGC for a week or so.”

“The wife,” O’Neill said. His voice changed and he grunted. It was amusement, though, not anything more sinister. “She deaf?”

“No, sir, just very tolerant.”

“Mmm.” O’Neill grew more serious. Teyla leaned forward, abandoning the documents in her lap so she could try to listen to the conversation. “I wasn’t aware you were still on good terms with anyone.” He sounded almost suspicious.

Sheppard could have said something mean about McKay. Instead, he remembered O’Neill at his bedside in Bethesda, silently putting away the offer to send a message back to Atlantis. “We reconciled.”

“They pulled your head out of your ass?” O’Neill asked, sounding more normal.

“Maybe,” Sheppard said. He looked at Teyla and she smiled.

“Anyways,” O’Neill went on. “I thought I’d rescue you.”

“Sir?”

“No friend of mine has to be cooped up with Dr. McKay while they’re recuperating. Slows the healing process.”

And this was even weirder, since Sheppard had just told him McKay wasn’t home – something O’Neill had known from the beginning, since that’s why he claimed to be calling. And since when were they friends?

“Sir?” Sheppard said again, hoping his confusion rang through.

“I got a cabin,” O’Neill said, rushing on as if he didn’t want to be interrupted. “In Minnesota. Gonna retire there. But since I’m flying a desk for the moment, it’s empty. Peace and quiet, good fishing. Also, cable.” He coughed. “No one likes a third wheel, Sheppard. Leave the McKays alone. I think you’ll find everything you’ll need up there. Key’s under the mat.”

“Thank you, sir,” he began, but O’Neill continued before he could say anything else.

“You should go now, before you miss the Spring.” O’Neill rattled off an address, and Teyla ran off to find a pen. When she returned, Sheppard wrote it on the back of the photo of Ronon’s escape, something which struck him as possibly oddly appropriate.

“Got it?” O’Neill asked.

“I think so,” Sheppard said, slowly. “Thank you, sir.”

“Just get your ass up there,” O’Neill said, pleasantly. “Goodbye, Colonel.”

The phone went silent against Sheppard’s ear, and then the dial tone kicked in. Sheppard lowered the phone to his lap.

“Did you get all that?” he asked Teyla.

“Some of it,” she said, looking a little confused. “I do not think I understood it.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking down at the address. “Me either.”

~ 

The contents of the envelope were mostly more pictures, captures from various security cameras Ronon passed by on his way out of the mountain. There’s also a security report, brief and bureaucratically neutral, detailing the massive protocol failures that resulted in Ronon’s escape. On the surface, they’re not that suspicious. The SF’s monitoring the cameras were elsewhere, dealing with an unspecified incident that somehow required all of them to be present for nearly the entire length of Ronon’s escape. The archaeologist was a civilian, untrained and unarmed, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with his access card. He was the smaller individual in most of the photographs; Ronon had him by the neck. There were a few parts that didn’t make sense. The author of the report didn’t know how Ronon got out of the holding cell, or how he’d literally vanished from the security footage shortly after taking out the SFs at the mountain’s exit. Blood hounds hadn’t found his scent past the parking lot, which made no sense since Ronon didn’t know how to drive and probably wouldn’t have tried to figure it out.

There was a post-it note among the papers, unsigned, but Sheppard still remembered Lorne’s neat, even handwriting. “Best I can do,” it said, and “sorry.”

Teyla smiled in relief when they found the note. “I had not seen him,” she said. “I did not want to believe that he would betray us like that.”

The whole package was one giant reassurance. Ronon had actually escaped – Sheppard had briefly entertained the grim thought that his break out had actually been an involuntary transfer to another, more clandestine prison, and that was why he hadn’t contacted anyone. He hadn’t shared this theory with either Teyla or McKay because it was horrible. Ronon also wasn’t hurt. The report said a tiny amount of blood splatter had been found in one of the corridors, along with the crushed remains of the transmitter implanted in Ronon’s body. On the video captures, he was upright and moving; in one of the images the hostage was biting him on the arm, but that was the more damage than the SFs had even managed to inflict.  

The unknowns were also comforting. Keller had said he’d had help. Sheppard hadn’t particularly believed her at the time, thinking that the only ones left alive willing to try had been Teyla and McKay. He also had faith that Ronon probably could have gotten through every single security procedure in place at the mountain all by himself, but he didn’t think Ronon would have done it quietly or, as was the case, invisibly. Capping it all was O’Neill’s bizarre call. He couldn’t fathom why or how the general would have become involved. Teyla said she had heard his name, but never seen him at the SGC.  She did, however, know the archaeologist Ronon had taken hostage. He’d visited her many times and been very sympathetic. That was interesting, although the pictures didn’t look like he was cooperating at all, and Ronon eventually left him in a red-faced heap on the ground.

It didn’t make a lot of sense.

Sheppard did like the thought that maybe Ronon hadn’t been alone on earth for three months, though. It wasn’t easy to imagine him hanging out with General O’Neill, in as much as he could imagine anyone hanging out with General O’Neill. Or just anyone hanging out with Ronon. Nor did Ronon staying in some isolated cabin seem very in character.

Teyla wasn’t bothered by these questions. She tried to call McKay and tell him she and Sheppard were leaving in the morning to follow the lead, but couldn’t reach him. The SGC said he was out of contact, which probably meant he was somewhere in orbit tempting the crew of one of the Daedalus-class ships to knock him out an airlock.

That was actually somewhat convenient. For Sheppard, anyway, since having McKay involved would have made the plan forming in his head a little harder. Well, not so much harder as ‘obvious’ and ‘loudly announced’.  Teyla packed a small bag and vanished upstairs to meditate or something. Evidently, she didn’t want to talk about all the ways this could in fact be something terrible, like a trap. McKay wouldn’t have been as quiet. Granted, it wasn’t a particularly subtle effort to lure them there, but too much had happened for Sheppard to take anything at face value. He wanted to trust General O’Neill, but it had occurred to him that a really easy way to trick the one alien that had escaped through a technicality back into custody was to bait her with the alien that had escaped legitimately. Having the guy who had staples in his gut and one bum leg come along too wouldn’t really be all that challenging to a team of SFs.

That was how Sheppard came to his decision. That and remembering O’Neill’s casual remarks that he should come alone. First, he called the mountain. They transferred him a couple of times, until finally he ended up with Lorne’s home number. It seemed like every time he opened his mouth now, Sheppard was lying to someone.

“Sir?” Lorne said, after Sheppard identified himself. He already sounded confused, and maybe a little bit fearful that Sheppard was going to do something phenomenally stupid like thank him for smuggling out that classified file.

“I wanted to apologize,” he said, “for how I acted today. There was no reason for me to give you such a tough time.”

“Um, sir?” Lorne said again.

“I know Ronon needs to be brought in for his own safety,” Sheppard lied. It sounded resigned to his own ears, maybe somebody would believe it. “I’m glad there’s someone on the team who probably doesn’t want to kill him.” And that part, sadly, was actually kind of true.

“Yes, sir,” Lorne said, apparently sticking to one word answers.

“I wanted to let you know that I’m taking off,” Sheppard said. “Things change. I don’t belong around here anymore”

Lorne didn’t say anything.

“Whatever the SGC ends up doing,” Sheppard continued, choosing his words carefully. “I know that I can count on you to do right by Teyla.”

There was a pause, as if Lorne was having trouble finding the hidden message.

“Within reason,” Lorne said, finally. He didn’t sound particularly happy, but he’d also just covered his ass if anyone was listening to the conversation.

“Absolutely,” Sheppard agreed. “Thanks, Lorne.” Then, he hung up.

He wasn’t thrilled, either, but at least he had a promise of sorts.

A few hours later, when the house was silent except for the cries of Bitey the cat wanting to be let into Teyla’s closed bedroom, Sheppard put his plan in motion. He rolled off the futon and hoisted his duffle on to his back. Unfortunately, he didn’t think the thumping sounds of his crutches as he climbed the stairs and made for the door were particularly stealthy. But once outside, Teyla’s window stayed dark, even when he got into the car and turned the engine on.

~

Sheppard was almost through Iowa when he got the call. A call on a cell phone he hadn’t even known he had, but the ringtone – The Imperial March from Star Wars, definitely McKay’s doing – was coming from the inside of his jacket tossed in the passenger seat. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he knocked half a dozen empty paper coffee cups to the floor as he tried to fish it out. It took him long enough that he though it might have gone to voicemail, but the line was open when he unfolded it and held it to his ear.

“Hello?” he said.

Someone huffed on the other end, too quiet and restrained to be McKay.

“Rodney tells me I can call the police and report my car stolen,” Teyla said, and her voice was as icy as he’d ever heard it, “and they will bring you back.”

The guilt was immediate. He’d felt it before he’d even left the house, but put it aside in favor of concentrating on things like driving safely for eight hours straight on thirty minutes of sleep, on not spilling scalding coffee in his lap, and on staying fast enough to make decent time without getting pulled over and explaining to the nice officer why he had out-of-state plates, a different out-of-state and also expired license (not many cars in either Pegasus or Afghanistan, okay?), while in a vehicle that was, as Teyla pointed out, not his.

“Thought he was out of contact,” Sheppard said, because ‘sorry’ wasn’t going to cut it.

“No longer,” Teyla said, and she sounded spitting mad.

Sheppard didn’t say anything, since apologizing was something you did when you were genuinely sorry, and also not actively going to continue doing the thing anyway.

“Rodney also wanted to know if you ‘felt good about abandoning me to face the evil’ –” she was quoting McKay now, and sounding still angrier, so Sheppard interrupted.

“I think you can protect yourself,” he said, even if that wasn’t wholly true. He wondered if McKay had spilled what Keller had mentioned.

“I can,” Teyla answered, and he was correct that she was also mad that McKay’s reaction had apparently mostly involved worrying about her. “This was not wise, John.”

“Maybe not,” he said.

It was too late, now. She couldn’t catch up unless she actually tried to have him arrested. Or, McKay hijacked one the ships and scooped them both up, which come to think of it was actually possible. He’d left his subdermal transmitter at McKay’s house, though, pinned to the cat’s collar. McKay could probably track the cell phone, and for a moment he was kind of annoyed that they’d apparently thought he might run off long before he’d even had reason to.

“Rodney also said you are ruining his plan.” Teyla sounded calmer, if still bitter.

“He has a plan?”

“He assured me it is brilliant.” Which meant McKay hadn’t actually told her it, and he had an image of Teyla knocking their heads together the next time they were together.

“Watch yourself, okay?” he said.

“You will contact me,” she retorted, “when you arrive.” It wasn’t a request.

“You’ll be the first to know,” he promised. “If there’s something to tell.”

“I hope that there is,” Teyla said. “Or you will feel very foolish.”

“Yeah,” Sheppard said.

~

It was early evening by the time Sheppard rolled up to O’Neill’s cabin. He’d pulled over in a McDonald’s parking lot and slept for half an hour, but otherwise switched from coffee to espresso to red bull. As a result, he felt jittery and unfocused, and he knew it was a terrible condition to be in for whatever came next. He put on the walking cast, even though his leg was actually even sorer from sitting for twelve hours on top of the exhaustion. He kept one crutch, leaving one hand free for his gun.

The cabin was dark and silent. It looked empty. The place was pretty isolated, too. If Sheppard had been followed, it hadn’t been by conventional means. He hadn’t seen a single car in the past hour.

Gun drawn, Sheppard went up to the front door. The walking cast foot slapped loudly against the pavement, announcing his arrival to anyone inside. He tried to put his weight down more lightly, but the plastic sound continued with every step.

 As O’Neill had promised, the key was right under the doormat. Sheppard gave up trying to be quiet, since he could do nothing about the ker-chunk of the deadbolt or the squeal of the hinges as the door swung open. He brought the gun up and found himself facing nothing but darkness.

Sheppard’s heart was pounding in his ears as he tried to find a light switch. He knocked into something tall and metallic with his crutch and had to release his grip on his gun to steady it, feeling upwards until his fingers found a beaded cord. Tugging produced a click, then warm yellow light filled the room from a bulb at the top of lamp Sheppard was tilting forward. He let go, immediately, re-raising his gun.

There was nothing. No one. Just a typical living room, a cozy-looking arm chair among vaguely rustic décor. Sheppard let out a breath, surprised to find himself so disappointed. The place looked empty and untouched. The lamp rocked fully back into place, and the room was completely still.

Sheppard almost put his gun away. He took a half step towards the darkened door way leading to the rest of the cabin, more out of impulse than anything else. There was no one here. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, heard the front door click shut. Sheppard tried to turn back around, but the cast and crutch didn’t move fast enough. He got the gun up, though, could have squeezed off the trigger.

But he couldn’t shoot Ronon.

It had to be Ronon. Someone his size with the same furious grace slammed into Sheppard from behind, sending him sprawling forward and smashing into a glass and metal coffee table that neither broke nor bent until his attacker landed on top of it all. Then there was glass _everywhere_ , shards that glittered in the lamp light such that Sheppard almost didn’t see the gleaming metal blade slicing towards his throat.

Sheppard caught the knife with the palm of his hand, instant pain burning all the way to his wrist. The gun was long gone, pressing into his leg from somewhere on the floor. His hand felt like it was smoldering. Sheppard grabbed the only thing he could reach – his crutch. He shoved it upwards almost blindly, catching his attacker in the throat or gut, judging by the grunt and huffing breath that followed. In that second, Sheppard scrambled backwards, only stopping when he ran into the arm chair base and it stopped his momentum.

The lamp had been knocked to the floor, as well; its shade knocked akimbo such that the bulb cast its light solely on Sheppard. He was illuminated, bleeding against O’Neill’s living room furniture. He could only see the outline of his attacker, crouched close enough to be on him again before he could blink.

Sheppard threw both hands up, even as the wound on his palm stung furiously.

“Ronon!” he said. “It’s me, Sheppard. It’s me. Don’t!”

And then he had to put his arms down and press hard against his palm with his other hand, because his vision was graying at the edges and he thought he was going to pass out. Then he remembered to hold it above his heart, and his arms went back up. He rested his hands against his shoulder, still firmly held together. He could feel the spiral of unconsciousness looming, and he tried desperately to keep his eyes open.

For a second Ronon didn’t move. Sheppard couldn’t see his face, but he seemed to just be watching.

“Okay,” Sheppard said, his voice sounding raspy and weak to his own ears. “Gonna pass out now.”

The Ronon-shape peered at him and then turned gray, and that was the last thing Sheppard saw as he slumped to the carpet.

~

Sheppard woke up to many kinds of pain. The old familiar ache of the gunshot, about a thousand times angrier for having recently been tackled. His leg had a similar opinion about getting slammed through a glass table. The strange, buzzing headache of dehydration and probably low blood sugar ticked behind his eyes. At the end of his arm, his hand was throbbing dully but persistently.

He opened his eyes, finding himself no longer on the floor but stretched out in the recliner, which was bent as far back as it would go. Sheppard brought his injured hand in, automatically. He blinked at it in confusion: a gauze bandage was tightly cinched around his palm. Immediately, he lifted his neck up and tore his gaze away, scanning the room. He didn’t have to look far. More lights were on: the righted standing lamp as well as the overhead fixture. It was dark outside now, but the room was brightly lit. Ronon was sitting on the floor against the front door. For the first time, Sheppard saw him clearly.

Ronon had a few inches of soft, curly hair. He looked smaller without his dreads. Smaller and younger, but also darker and harder. Or maybe it was just the expression on his face, something tight and closed off. He was in a plain white t-shirt, covered in red-brown splotches from someone’s blood. He was also wearing jeans, dark blue denim that wasn’t quite long enough and ended right at his ankles. It was utterly normal and yet simultaneously the most alien Sheppard had ever seen him look.

Sheppard tried to sit up, shifting his weight forward. The recliner mechanism gave, creaking as it reset itself to an upright position.

“Hey,” Sheppard said. It came out thick and muffled. He cleared his throat. “Hey.”

Ronon blinked at him, gaze assessing and suspicious. He didn’t have any visible weapons, not even a knife. “Told me you were dead.”

“What?” That was out of nowhere. Sheppard stared at him. “Who told you that?”

“McKay.”

“Oh.” Sheppard forced a grunted, ridiculous laugh out; it hurt his ribs. “Well, I guess I owe him a stabbing.” He looked at the bandage on his hand.

“Replicators don’t bleed for that long,” Ronon said flatly, and there was a story in his eyes that Sheppard didn’t get, a reference he must have missed out on. Then he remembered, _Elizabeth_ _._

“Okay,” he said. “I’d have stabbed me, too.” He spread his hands. “I’m not a Replicator.”

Ronon continued to stare at him, making no move to get off the floor. “Yeah,” he said.

The talking part was hard. “Also not dead,” Sheppard said. “I, um, went to fight a war here on earth. That’s where I’ve been. I didn’t hear about anything until a few weeks ago when Rodney found me. Then I came back to look for you.”

“Iraq?” Ronon asked, and when Sheppard boggled at him his eyes slid across the room to the television set against the wall.

“Oh,” he said. “No, Afghanistan. But they’re close.”

Ronon didn’t say anything.

“That’s not an excuse,” Sheppard said, finally. “I went dark. I was really pissed off about leaving Atlantis so I decided to pretend like it never existed. I’m an asshole.”

Ronon gave a tiny nod, barely a dip of his chin. He moved his legs, folding his feet beneath his body as if preparing to stand. “How’d you find me?” he asked.

“General Jack O’Neill,” Sheppard said. “He owns this place.” It was his turn to ask questions. “You know him?”

“Yeah, he came by once.” Ronon paused for a second, looking around the battered room. “He might be pissed about this.”

“He got you out, then?”

“Sort of. He had a big plan that I didn’t know about. I went ahead of his schedule.” Ronon looked kind of pleased with himself. “He had his friends take me here.”

“Yeah?”

Ronon frowned. “I didn’t really want to come.” He made a shooting gesture with one hand, and Sheppard guessed he’d been zatted and taken here. “Asked me to stay here until my team figured out a way home.”

Sheppard wondered when O’Neill had said that, and what exactly he’d meant.

“You’ve been here the whole time?” he asked. That seemed impossibly simple. But who would search a US Air Force General’s summer cabin for a fugitive alien he’d barely even known.

“More or less. Been around.” Ronon shrugged. “Nowhere else to go.” He shrugged again. “Don’t know why he did it.”

“He recruited me,” Sheppard said. The answer formed suddenly in his head. “He sent me to Pegasus. He was stepping up. Stepping in.”

Ronon shrugged like he didn’t care. He stood up, rising easily off the ground. He walked closer to Sheppard. “We’re going home?” he asked, and for some reason that made Sheppard’s throat tighten up and his eyes flush. He reached out and grabbed at Ronon’s elbow with the hand that hadn’t recently been sliced open.

“Yeah,” he said, even though he had no idea.

Ronon grinned down at him, and in the next second he reached down, looped his arms behind Sheppard’s back, and scooped him in for a rib-crushing hug before dropping him heavily back into the chair.

“Ow,” Sheppard said, gasping. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Ronon said.

~ 

As promised, Sheppard made his first call to Teyla.

“I kind of tricked her,” he said to Ronon, the phone ringing in his ear. “She wanted to come.”

“Should have brought her,” Ronon said, standing next to the recliner. “I probably wouldn’t have stabbed her.”

Teyla took a very long time answering the phone, which was kind of worrying. She was probably asleep, he rationalized, but it didn’t really do anything to reassure him. Then, Teyla did actually answer the phone, sounding out of breath and alarmed, and suddenly Sheppard wasn’t reassured at all.

“Teyla?” Then he heard something that sounded like the rack of a handgun. “What’s going on?”

“I received a very strange call from an old friend,” Teyla said, her voice smoother than it should have been. She didn’t say the name but Sheppard immediately thought _Lorne_. “I believe the house is about to raided.” She fumbled the phone and Sheppard heard what had to be a louder, heavier magazine chambering.

“You have to get out of there,” he said, and Ronon jerked in place, leaning closer.

“You took the car,” Teyla reminded him. “I am arming myself. Rodney is coming.”

“Rodney is six hours away!” Sheppard said.

“And you are farther,” Teyla said. “Rodney said you must stay where you are.”

“Shit! Teyla –”

“Did you find what you were looking for?” She interrupted.

“Yeah.” He almost stuttered. “Yeah, I did.”

“Is he well?” Sweetness filled her voice, even as the phone line suddenly filled with static. Sheppard heard something thud on her end, followed by a loud crack. The line went dead, the call dropped.

Sheppard dropped the cell phone into his lap, body filled with useless, desperate adrenaline.

“What’s happening?” Ronon demanded.

“They’re coming for her,” Sheppard said, his hands rising to his face. He shouldn’t have left her. There wasn’t any reason she shouldn’t have come. He didn’t know why O’Neill had put that out there.

“Let’s go!” said Ronon, rocking back on his heels.

“She’s in Texas,” Sheppard said, and Ronon just blinked at him. “Eleven hours away,” he said. “We’d never make it.”

He dropped his hands from his face, unsure what to say. But then the chair bottom was vanishing from beneath him, his weight strangely suspended in mid-air as the walls of General O’Neill’s cabin around them melted away. Gravity returned, just as quickly as it had vanished. The chair was gone and Sheppard would have hit the floor except that Ronon grabbed him by the forearm and pulled him up, spinning at the same time so that his body was in front of Sheppard’s, a long knife drawn with the hand not holding Sheppard.

They were on the bridge of a Daedalus-class ship. An empty bridge – the only two people on it were McKay and Teyla, standing together near the helm.

Sheppard blinked. “What?” he managed.

Ronon looked around, his knife hand slowly falling to his side.

“Ronon,” Teyla said. She looked fine, untouched, not a hair out of place. She crossed the distance between them and then nearly disappeared inside Ronon’s enormous arms as he stooped to bring his forehead to hers  
  
His heart rate finally slowing, Sheppard limped over to McKay. Unlike Teyla, McKay didn’t look fine. His face managed to be flushed red and kind of pale at the same time. He was covered in a sheen of sweat and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

“What?” Sheppard asked again  
  
“I stole it,” McKay said. He stuck his chin out. “Next time you decide to run off, could you check first to make sure you aren’t totally and completely ruining my life? You have no idea how fast I had to work.” He heaved a deep breath that sounded like relief and exhaustion.

Sheppard looked out the window at stars rushing by. “We gonna have company?”

“No,” McKay sounded smug. “I, um, sabotaged the rest of the fleet.” Sheppard stared at him. “Temporarily,” he added. “By the time they’re ready to go, we’ll already be in Pegasus.”

“Oh,” Sheppard said, shocked and impressed and too overwhelmed to express either. “Four people can manage this thing?” he asked.

McKay made a face. “Well, three people and _me_.” Sheppard let his body drop into the nearest chair. “This ship is supplied to keep eighty people alive for a year,” McKay said, cheerfully. “Once we figure out how close we can get to space gates without sending you haywire, we’ll be fine.”

Sheppard gave him a grin. “Good job, Rodney.”

“How’d you find him?” McKay asked, looking across the bridge at where Teyla was still buried in Ronon’s chest.

“General O’Neill,” Sheppard said, feeling gratitude he was probably never going to be able to express to the right person. “I think he sent me alone because they’d have followed Teyla.” He looked up, saw her finally withdrawing from Ronon’s embrace. “Why’d you tell Ronon I was dead, huh?”

“What? I didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did.” Ronon was moving closer, Teyla sticking close to his side.

“No,” McKay denied. “I may have said ‘as good as dead’ or ‘dead to us’ or something along those lines, since as you remember you were being a moron at the time, Sheppard.”

“He thought I was a Replicator,” Sheppard said, waving his bandaged hand around.

“Oh.” McKay wasn’t sympathetic at all. “Well, Ronon, maybe if you’d bothered to try to talk to us for those three months I could have clarified that issue for you.”

Ronon shrugged. “Didn’t want you to get locked up for me.”

McKay blinked at him, opened his mouth to say something that turned into a muffled yelp when Ronon stepped forward and squished him in a bear hug.

Something brushed against Sheppard’s cast and when he looked down, the calico cat was winding affectionately around his leg.

“You brought the cat?” he asked Teyla, who had moved to stand beside him.

“He is Rodney’s pet,” she said. “I thought it should come home with us.”

 

~The End~

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